My friend Kay at Don’t Mess With Taxes looked through some information provided by the Government Accountability Office and discovered that the IRS estimated it saved $3.10 per e-filed return[3]. The information is on page one of the report[4] by the GAO in the footnote.

It’s estimated that, in 2009, it cost $3.29 to process a paper return compared to only nineteen cents for an electronic return. It should surprise no one that processing a paper return is more expensive but even I didn’t expect it to be over seventeen times more expensive. This is an improvement over 2008, when it cost $2.87 to process a paper return and 35 cents to process an electronic one.